All posts tagged Love Creeps

My first novel, “Nude Men,” published twenty years ago, opens with: “I am a man without many pleasures in life, a man whose few pleasures are small, but a man whose small pleasures are very important to him. One of them is eating. One reading. Another eating while reading.”

That last sentence is actually based on me, on one of my pleasures. Many things I do, I do slowly, a little overly thoroughly (my tragic flaw), so any opportunity to save time by doing more than one thing at once, appeals to me.

A year ago, I went through a patch of personal problems that were making it impossible for me to stick to my usual exercise routine. In order not to completely deteriorate physically, I forced myself to take a one-hour walk every day, which was much easier and required less willpower than my usual forms of exercise.

So each day, I dragged myself morosely through a nearby park for an hour.

Sometimes I’d go with my soul mate, Richard Hine, or I’d call any one of a few friends who enjoyed accompanying me, and we’d walk while catching up on each other’s lives. Most often, though, I liked going alone, and I walked while thinking. When thinking made matters worse, I walked while listening to an audiobook.

I stayed in the habit of these walks until late April of this year, when my life was turned upside down one evening when I was browsing the internet and noticed something strangely sexist on Wikipedia. Read More »

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